Mick Hartley

Corbyn, we're told, will not resign after his inevitable election defeat. It's not about winning: it's about ensuring that the Labour Party remains under the control of the hard left.

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to stay on as Labour leader even if he leads his party to a crushing election defeat on June 8, The Independent can reveal. 

Party figures close to the Labour leader have said there is a good chance Mr Corbyn will either refuse to resign or run again to retain power.

The key goal of Mr Corbyn’s group is that regardless of the election result, he cling to power at least until after party conference when his allies can attempt to change the system of electing the leader in a bid to secure a leftwing successor….

While Party leaders who fail at the ballot box traditionally step aside, as Ed Miliband did in 2015 or David Cameron following defeat in the EU referendum, Labour sources who know Mr Corbyn well and those close to Labour leadership rivals say he is likely to stay on as leader as he bids to cement the powerbase of the hard left….

Another former Labour staffer who worked closely with Mr Corbyn, said: “There is a good chance he will either refuse to resign or run again. If he were to run again, I see no reason why he could not win again.

“Those who have his ear do not see a general election loss as anything more than another obstacle on the long road to control over the Labour Party."

Nick Cohen:

After gifting the Tories a majority it might take two or more elections to overturn, most assume that Jeremy Corbyn must resign. Defeat would have a purifying effect and a new opposition would be born from the ruins. Freed from the grip of yesterday’s men, it could begin the gruelling task of constructing a coalition that could hold ministers to account during the hard years ahead and develop a strategy to win in 2022 or 2027.

This is the normal way in democracies. In the midst of death, there is life. The defeated leader puts the good of the party and country first and accepts he must get out of the way. (Incidentally, the leader is always a “he” in the “progressive” Labour party. It might be in less trouble if it allowed the stodge to be leavened with the occasional “she”.)

But the treatment of dissent by the Corbyn-supporting Unite union tells me what I already knew: the far left will never willingly let go of the Labour party, however loudly the electorate tells it to leave. The normal way of democracies is not the far left’s way. Why should it be, when the far left never believed in democracy to begin with? In normal democratic countries and organisations, victors do not crush opponents and deprive them of their livelihoods for daring to run in an election. They do not warn anyone who might be watching that they will face the same treatment if they challenge the all-powerful leadership. For taking on Unite’s Len McCluskey, Gerard Coyne has been suspended from his job as Unite’s organiser in the West Midlands. He has been put on a disciplinary charge and banned from union meetings. He may be out of work within a few weeks….

Corbyn won’t do the decent thing and resign any more than McCluskey would do the decent thing and shake his opponent’s hand. The far left has waited 110 years to gain control of the Labour. It will not let a little thing like a Tory landslide weaken its grip.

The hidden question this election ought to settle is – can Britain now have an effective opposition? My fear is that the answer will be that we cannot. An opportunist election by a sneaky prime minister will by default become a sea change that will transform Britain forever and for the worse.